Reviews for Democracy online

The average rating for Democracy online based on 2 reviews is 2 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-03-18 00:00:00 Martie Brown Reading Democracy on Trial mirrored the experience that I had reading Ivan Illich's Deschooling Society; I found myself agreeing with Illich's argument point by point but then had some very sudden and intense disagreement with some of his practical prescriptions, whereas I agree with almost nothing Elshtain writes (basically that claims for recognition by status and minority groups threaten the happy liberal equilibrium that allegedly characterized American constitutional democracy in the 1980s and early 1990s), but was really struck by three passages about privacy and compulsory visibility. "This assault on civility flows from an embrace of what might be called a politicized ontology, that is to say, persons are more and more judged not by what they do or say but by what they are. One's identity becomes the sole and only ground of politics, the sole and only determinant of political good and evil. Those who disagree with my 'politics,' then, are the enemies of my identity." "When one opens one's body up to publicity, and when one's intimate life is put on display, one not only invites, one actively seeks the exploitation of one's own body to a variety of ends not fully under one's control. For one has withdrawn the body's intimacy from interpersonal relations and exposed it to an unknown audience who will make of it what they will. [...:] This is not to embrace duplicity and disguise; rather, it means holding on to the concealment necessary to a rich personal life and to human dignity in order that one might know and thus work to attain that which is self-revelatory, public, central to human solidarity and fellowship, what is in common." "What follows from this version of 'the personal is political' is the presumption that being gay is in itself a political act, condition, statement, or claim. For those pushing a strong version of identity politics, any politics that doesn't revolve around their identities is of no interest to them [...:] Personal authenticity becomes the test of political credibility." I don't like how she got to these positions, but I think there's really something to them.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-31 00:00:00 Robert Brucks This book is in essence about our need to disagree well, which is the mark of a healthy democratic society. Yet that is the thing we seem unable and unwilling to do, thus democracy today is “on trial.” This book is a very humane and learned set of academic reflections and arguments about the public virtues and ideals citizens must share if we are going to make it as a democratic society, and names some of the ways the left and the right today seem committed to doing just the opposite. Some will attack the book due to Elshtain’s conservative (classical liberal) intellectual tradition, but I think that’s a pretty lame assessment of this fair and challenging book. There’s plenty for every truth-seeking citizen, left or right, to agree, and hopefully, disagree, with.